2028 for full completion of the Dallas upgrade is a bit of a yikes since they're doing it in pieces...wonder if they would be better off just closing the entire thing for a year and going full steam ahead? I'm sure they thought about that, I guess they didn't find a suitable temp stadium or one where the numbers made sense.
I believe the Dick is the oldest SSS built for MLS that hasn't had a major upgrade (either completed or planned at this point). And it desperately needs it. That was one of the points C38 made in its protest last year. On that note though, there are a couple of indicators that a construction project is imminent. I've been told (though I don't know if its been publicly announced) that Phish's annual Labor Day concerts at the Dick won't be happening next year, and one reason that's been rumored is that the facility won't be available for concert use due to construction. The Rapids have also announced that the Season Ticket Holder parking lot is going away next season. That lot is right next to the north end of the stadium, which is the area used for the stage for concerts. So it would be a logical place to have blocked off for construction work on the north end. If I'm reading these tea leaves correctly what it indicates to me is that the north end might be be getting an upgrade. That's the "open" end of the stadium and the building behind it houses the locker rooms, training facilities, etc. One of the reports last year was that a former player filed a grievance with the union about the Rapids' training facilities. I could see them finally redoing that area, either revamping that whole building or possibly closing off that end of the stadium and them moving the training facilities into a new building sitting on what was the season ticket holder parking lots. Hopefully whatever they do includes a new scoreboard/video board because the 480p board we have now is 25 year old garbage that's dying a pixel at a time.
I do enjoy the "Founders Club" picture that has a large mural of the former home of the Chicago Fire in Bridgeview.
Wow! If ever there was a stadium that absolutely needed some covered stands, this was it. Worst day of my life was on a 92f day game there.
Good news out of Frisco and I think the tea leaf reading on the Dick is spot on. Bummer about NE hitting a speedbump, but pikely more palms need greased. Hopefully next legislative session they give it another go. Miami in 2026 and NYCFC in 2027 will be fantastic showcases for the league. Boston and Chicago would be too. Hopefully they are next. Then we can start dreaming of real grass in Cascadia.
You may see grass, but I don't believe you'll see any MLS games on that grass. Seattle's World Cup organizers have said they will not start installing grass until after the Seahawks 2025 season is complete and will remove it as soon as the last WC game in Seattle is played. If this is true, the grass won't be ready until June-ish 2026 and FIFA won't allow games to be played on the fields that close to the World Cup.
Are you expecting that the Sounders will play home games elsewhere that season until after the World Cup?
If they can get Apple to be flexible on start times, I could see them playing at Husky Stadium, but, tbh, I suspect the Sounders and Reign will start the season off with a long road trip.
You can't shove the entire home schedule into August-October. The hosting agreements give FIFA full control of the venues 30 days before the first game. Is it not possible that the grass installation will be playable between March and early May before that handover?
How dare you! Seahawks are going all the way to the Super Bowl!!! But, yes, the regular season ends in January. I believe the predictions are for the Seahawks to finish the season somewhere between 10W-7L and 7W-9L, so there is a chance they'll qualify for a wild card spot and likely get bounced in the Wild Card game, or divisional game. I'm definitely not disagreeing with you on cramming a full season August-October, but, from what I'm understanding, it will take 3 months to get the field installed and then some amount of time for the field to settle in.
That's not really a valid argument anymore. We aren't talking about growing grass in an open field here. Negative pressure drainage, field warmers, UV lights on wheels, etc, have made it so grass can be grown and maintained in basically any weather conditions. It's expensive, but a few million extra a year isn't that significant for billionaire owners.
Yoshou is right that enough money/tech can handle the problem but there’s a difference between maintaining grown grass and growing new grass. There’s also a difference between the amount of rain (NYC) and the number of days of rain (Seattle). When things never get a chance to dry out, as they never do in Seattle between November and March, it presents a different set of challenges .
The last minute grass is what led to the Copa disaster. It needs time to root in order to play correctly. FIFA has strict requirements and all the stadiums agreed to them. If they can do it in 30 days, I’ll be impressed.
They're not going to do it 30 days. 30 days is the period where FIFA will have exclusive control and likely will prohibit other events in the venues.
Oh come on. Seattle doesn't get more rain or more rainy days than a lot of Western European cities that have no problem with grass pitches. I used to live near Burnley which gets 48" of rain and 175 days with more than 1mm of rain compared to Seattle's paltry 39" and 150 rain days.
It's not like they're going to grow the grass from seed. Stadiums get their grass from sod farms. The big thing they have to do is make sure the sod sets properly.
When I lived in the South of France and Northern Italy, it rained and snowed like crazy during the Serie A season. Just this week in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna , after days of torrential rains caused rivers to overflow. This one from last years flood.of the Arno river in Pisa threatened to burst its banks... ...
People from the PNW seem to think they're in some sort of extreme weather zone because they get a bit of coastal drizzle and have to carry of brolly.
What’s pretty mysterious to me is the extent to which stadiums with artificial surfaces that’ll flip to grass will have below ground infrastructure that’ll allow newly installed sod to thrive and how comprehensive these flips will be. I came across a quote about Seattle’s stadium that said it was built with below ground “plumbing” meant to support grass. That’s great, but I assume fairly common, in that artificial fields require drainage. I’m more concerned about the material that exists below various fields. Near as I can tell, it’s normally several inches of some sort of compacted substrate that provides stability for the turf field but allows for drainage. The turf, itself, is often supported by a sand/rubber pellet mixture that you often see being kicked up on TV in slow-motion replays. Anyway, my question is to what extent will these stadiums rip out what’s there and replace it with not just sod, but more importantly a substrate comprised of a growing medium into which grass roots will grow, versus just laying that substrate on top of the existing turf or turf substrate? In other words, you can’t just peel off the turf/infill, roll out sod, and declare victory. The existing substrate below turf fields isn’t an organic material into which grass will root.